Low-level snark

I’m currently at work on a piece on political discourse, a key portion of which will rely on David Denby’s new book Snark. The book is flawed, perhaps fatally, because of Denby’s own biases and his blindness to them, but his underlying point is a sound one: that discourse in the age of the Internet is fundamentally nasty and mean-spirited for no good reason and both the nastiness and the mean-spiritedness retards decent conversation.

There’s one particular brand of snark that annoys me to no end, namely the obsession of the young to dismiss the old as worthless. A prime, recurring example of this is Isaac Chotiner’sobsession with P.J. O’Rourke. Pretty much everytime P.J. publishes a piece in the Weekly Standard, Chotiner writes something like this. If I had the time, I could tell you exactly what Chotiner would write about P.J.’s piece in this week’s issue, and exactly how it would end; since I don’t have the time, allow me to tell you the form it will take. Chotiner will pull out a joke from P.J.’s piece, write something sarcastic like “Hilarious!” next to it, and then close with “O’Rourke hasn’t been funny in 20 years, why doesn’t the dried up old man hang it up?”

Well, if P.J. O’Rourke’s comedic stylings don’t meet the approval of a former New Republic intern, he probably should retire, shouldn’t he? When a bright light like Isaac calls you out on your failings, I mean, what can one do? Anything short of seppuku probably isn’t good enough…*

We see a lesser example at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen today, in which Freddie de Boer describes Robert Stacy McCain as a “tedious nothing.” Now, I have plenty of disagreements with McCain–including on the topic Freddie, McCain, and Schwenkler are going back and forth on–but what does this sort of invective accomplish? And really, where does Freddie get off? Say what you will about McCain, but he’s a good enough writer to have provided for himself and his family for years with little more than his skill with words and reporting acumen. I mean, sure, that’s not as intellectually impressive as being a prolific commenter at Megan McArdle’s blog AND the American Scene, but really, what is?*

I don’t plan on doing anything trite like calling on people to be nicer to each other, but please, think before you snark. Lord knows I should probably follow this rule myself…but if you take away my ability to mock Matt Yglesias’s frequent spelling/grammatical mistakes, I won’t have much to live for.

*Some might criticize me on the grounds that I myself have employed an unnecessarily high level of snark in this post by attacking Chotiner and Freddie. And they would be right to do so. But turnabout is fair play, you reap what you sow, etc.